cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/609883
This BBC interview has a #Cloudflare rep David Bellson who describes CF’s observations on internet traffic. CF tracks for example the popularity of Facebook vs. Tiktok. Neither of those services are Cloudflared, so how is CF tracking this? Apparently they are snooping on traffic that traverses their servers to record what people are talking about. Or is there a more legit way Cloudflare could be monitoring this activity?
They run a lot of servers that handle traffic and DNS, as well. If someone looks up FB.com, they almost certainly aren’t just going to stare at the IP address, but go to the site.
Basically… They’re just reading addresses on the envelopes, not opening them up.